A History of Indian Medical Literature v3.c44.s5.t2: Date
A History of Indian Medical Literature v3.c44.s5.t2
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Date
v3.c44.s5.t2.1
Various suggestions have been forward regarding the period in which Lolimbarāja lived and the dates of composition of his works. Some authorities are of the opinion that the author of the Harivilāsa was a contemporary of king Bhoja. 508 The untenability of this view has been demonstrated by B. Tripāṭhī. 509 The arguments brought forward by P.K. Gode 510 in trying to establish that the author of the Harivilāsa was different from and lived about thirty years earlier than the Lolimbarāja who composed the other works have also been invalidated by B. Tripāṭhī, 511 thus proving that one and the same Lolimbarāja wrote the four medical works, the Ratnakalācarita and the Harivilāsakāvya. This Lolimbarāja is assigned to the period A.D. 1310–1370 by P. Hymavathi, 512 to 1538–1608 by B. Tripāṭhī, 513 to 1578–1648 by L.R. Pāṅgārkar, 514 to about 1625 by P.V. Sharma, 515 and to the seventeenth century by V.L. Bhāve. 516
v3.c44.s5.t2.2
The exact period of his literary activity depends on the dates of MSS of his compositions and their reliability. Two MSS of the Harivilāsakāvya, preserved respectively in the Tanjore and BORI collections, are said to state that this work was composed in 1583/84.⁵¹⁷ The earliest dated MS of the Vaidyajīvana was completed in 1607/08;⁵¹⁸ a MS of this poem with the commentary of Jñānadeva alias Dāmodara was completed in 1612/13.⁵¹⁹
v3.c44.s5.t2.3
The period of Lolimbarāja’s literary activity may therefore have been the last quarter of the sixteenth century if the evidence referred to is reliable. B. Tripāthī, being convinced that the style and structure of the Harivilāsakāvya prove it to be the most mature of Lolimbarāja’s works, written when he may have been forty-five years of age, has concluded that he was born in 1538, but the onus of this assertion has to be left on this author. The proposed date of Lolimbarāja does not conflict with the chronology of authors quoting him or influenced by him.